The best interactive fiction games

Interactive fiction games (or text adventures) are adventure games in which the player gives textual commands in order to act within the given story. The story itself is told both using text and static pictures or with no graphics of any kind, just text. The genre's stepping stones are Adventure (developed in 1975) and the Zork series. Infocom, Legend Entertainment and Magnetic scrolls were some of the most popular interactive fiction developers of the 80s.

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The mist

DOS1985 Angelsoft

Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor

DOS1987 Infocom

If you ever wanted to roleplay in a text adventure where a coconut is of utmost importance, Beyond Zork has your back. This is Infocom at its most delightfully weird: part RPG, part parser game, all nonsense. You’ll customiz...

Plundered Hearts

DOSMac OS1987 Infocom

Sorcerer

DOS1984 Infocom

Knight Orc

DOSMac OS1987 Level 9 Computing

Knight Orc is a text-based adventure game released in 1987 by Level 9 Computing, a British game development studio renowned for creating interactive fiction during the 1980s. In Knight Orc, you play as Grindleguts the Orc, fl...

Spellbreaker

DOS1985 Infocom

Perry Mason

DOS1985 Paisano Productions

Suspended

DOS1983 Infocom

James Bond 007: A View to a Kill

DOS1985 Angelsoft

The Wizard of Oz

DOS1985 Windham Classics

Questprobe featuring Human Torch and The Thing

DOS1985 Adventure International

Romantic encounters at the dome

DOS1988 MicroIllusions

Deadline

DOS1982 Infocom

Gateway 2: Homeworld

DOS1993protected Legend Entertainment

Bureaucracy

DOSMac OS1987 Infocom

Douglas Adams, the twisted genius behind Hitchhiker’s Guide, brings you the most terrifying adventure of all: paperwork. Bureaucracy turns mundane modern life into a text-based hellscape of lost forms, passive-aggressive cle...

Tass Times in Tonetown

DOS1986 Interplay Productions

Gnome Ranger 2: Ingrid's Back

DOS1988 Level 9 Computing

Moonmist

DOS1986 Infocom

Beyond the Titanic

DOS1986 Apogee Software

Before Titanic was a movie with a lot of weeping, there was Beyond the Titanic, a text adventure where surviving the iceberg is just the beginning. The game takes the historic disaster and then says, “What if we added a secr...

20000 Leagues under the sea

DOS1988 Coktel Vision

Based loosely on Jules Verne’s famous tale, this game lets you live your steampunk submarine dreams with all the elegance of a DOS interface. You command the Nautilus, explore the ocean depths, and encounter strange sea crea...

Forbidden Quest

DOS1983 Pryority software

1893: A World's Fair Mystery

Windows XP/98/95Mac OS2003

1893: A World's Fair Mystery is an interactive fiction game developed by the American studio Illuminated Lantern and released in 2002. Set during the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, the game combines historical ficti...

Gamma Force in Pit of a Thousand Screams

DOS1988 Tom Snyder Productions

The Crack of Doom

DOS1989 Beam Software

Zork Quest: The Crystal of Doom

DOS1989 Tom Snyder Productions

More illustrations, more intrigue, more doom. The Crystal of Doom continues the hybrid of comic-style storytelling and light role-playing with just enough choices to make you feel clever (or guilty). This time, you’re chasin...

Border Zone

DOS1987 Infocom

Welcome to Border Zone (1987, DOS), where the Cold War is hot and your only weapon is your brain (and maybe a good map). This text-based espionage thriller from Infocom combines spy drama with multiple protagonists and a real-time...